Meta enters pay-to-use AI market with Muse Spark 1.1

Meta describes its latest iteration as a ‘significant upgrade’ over the last model.

Following a series of open-source models over recent years, Meta has begun selling access to its AI tech with its latest launch, Muse Spark 1.1.

The model marks the second product under the Alexandr Wang-run Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL) and comes three months after the flagship series Muse Spark was first unveiled.

Meta described its latest iteration as a “significant upgrade” over the last model, while Mark Zuckerberg told Bloomberg that this could be the first time “Meta’s models are better than all of the Google models”. MSL chief Wang told CNBC that the new product represents Meta’s “strongest model for agentic and coding work yet”.

Muse Spark 1.1 will include a new paid tier for developers, which according to Zuckerberg will be “among the most affordable options” in the market. “The pricing is going to be very aggressive and attractive,” he told Bloomberg.

“We think that there’s a real ability to be able to offer frontier or very high-level intelligence at a much more affordable cost.”

Meta is also introducing a new Meta Model API system, which will be used to collect fees from developers. Meta’s API pricing is roughly one-quarter of what OpenAI and Anthropic charge for their top models.

The new model can take over a wide array of tasks across the device, including assigning tasks to sub-agents. It can also remember actions and retrieve information from much earlier work. Zuckerberg said that the model has “state-of-the-art or very close to it” agentic reasoning and tool use.

Muse Spark 1.1 showcases significant leaps over Muse Spark in a number of benchmarks, while performing at par or a few points ahead similar models from OpenAI, Google or Anthropic. It achieved a score of 72.2 in vibe coding, leaps ahead of Muse Spark, which reached just under 20.

Meta is carving itself another revenue stream, after planning to spend up to $145bn in capital expenditure this year. A majority of that spend is focused on its AI ventures.

The company is also reportedly planning to enter the cloud computing market by building a business that would sell access to AI computing power and models to external customers. Earlier this year, it signed a $21bn deal with CoreWeave to access the company’s AI cloud capacity until December 2032.

Despite reporting a revenue growth of 33pc over the quarter past, morale at Meta is seemingly at a low, with employees expressing frustration at the mounting work pressure created by the company’s major AI plans.

MSL, however, is “doing better than we expected”, Zuckerberg told Bloomberg. The company has a new model under development codenamed ‘Watermelon’, which the Meta CEO said could help further its positioning.

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